


My Shirt, My Rules

by akikouyou



Category: The 39 Clues - Various Authors
Genre: AU, F/F, I marie kondo'd the entire cahill family oops, alek is mentioned, natarina is there
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-27
Updated: 2020-05-27
Packaged: 2021-03-03 02:53:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,817
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24397606
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/akikouyou/pseuds/akikouyou
Summary: Four years after the fall of the Soviet Union, and former KGB agent Irina Spasky is forced to defect from Russia
Kudos: 5





	My Shirt, My Rules

**Author's Note:**

> I hardly count this as a 39C fic because Irina is the only character (with mentions of alek and nrr) and it doesn't follow canon for one second. Was supposed to be part of a longer work with several oc’s but my poor pea sized brain literally cannot think up a storyline good enough, so oh well

Moscow

1995

Within two hours, the entire hotel room had gone from neat temporary residence to chaotic disorder. Files and paperwork were scattered across the bed, desk, and floor. Heaps of envelopes were stacked along the air vent on the back wall. Empty soda bottles sat on every non paper covered surface. It was hot inside the room, though it was snowing outside and the window was pried open an inch.

“Bloody hell,” muttered Gavrie Markov, a somewhat friend of Irina’s who lived in London and was a cobbler for MI6 back in the eighties, born to Soviet parents. He was leaning against the nightstand, blocking the lamp light from everyone else in the room, which included Irina herself, and the two creators of this entire mess, Nathaniel Halloway and Elizabeth Halloway. Both Americans, both reluctantly helping Irina, after much coercion on her end.

Beth had just returned to the room with dinner for all of them, and a new shirt for Irina (as hers had gotten soaked while outside from the snowy slush).

“Irina,” Nathaniel said when he finally looked up. “Why did Beth get you one of _my_ shirts?” A sly smirk made its way across Irina’s face.

“Is my shirt too,  _ podonok _ ,” she said. “Until I get to the States. What’s mine is yours and what’s yours is mine.”

Nathaniel looked like he was about to throttle his newly wed wife where she sat, but he kept calm. Irina got up and disappeared into the tiny washroom nearby, unbuttoned her own shirt, and shrugged on the new one so she could hang hers to dry. Through the wall, she heard them begin to speak again.

“What does  _ podonok _ mean?” Nathaniel asked Markov.

“Just pretend she’s calling you a little ray of sunshine.”

Irina smiled to herself. The room outside went silent once more, but only for a few seconds.

“Well, we might as well finish these last papers before we eat,” Nathaniel said, and Irina came out of the washroom.

“It’s time you stop lying about your origins,” Nathaniel immediately spat out. Irina returned to her spot on the desk chair, pulling her knees up to her chest and glaring at him.

“I haven’t lied about anything,” she mumbled, and Beth shook her head.

“Just say it. You answer the questions, I make one phone call, you have no trouble getting through immigration.”

Irina wasn’t pleased with the current situation. Mostly because it wasn’t her idea, and Beth insisted that she had everything planned out, yet decisions were still being made on a whim.

She had told Beth, _“I’m not going to an embassy and pleading asylum. I will have to wait years before I get it.”_ Well, as it turned out, good old Beth had a fantastic idea for getting around that, and that’s where Nathaniel came in.

Irina was already opposed to stooping down and pleading a government for leniency, but she was really opposed to marrying an American just to duck around extradition laws. There was an awfully long list of other countries she would much rather flee to that they had decided to ignore, much to her annoyance.

Nathaniel was the youngest Halloway sibling, fifteen years younger than Beth and twenty older than Irina, making the difference awkward but still passable. He was also a former diplomat that had spent three years in Romania. Knowing the marriage wouldn’t have to be for long, he didn’t oppose the idea when Beth called for the favor. However, getting all the documents in order was proving to be difficult. Especially when it came to questions such as “Where are you from?” which mattered greatly when you were trying not to get arrested. And although Irina hadn’t (technically) been an active agent in three years, Nathaniel was still suspicious. No, it wasn’t like Irina went around quoting Das Kapital or anything, but more than a few good decades had left everyone more than paranoid of the Reds.

“Let’s start with the fact that you’re not Polish,” Nathaniel began. “You’re Russian.”

Irina blinked at him, a blank look across her face.

“Yes,” she said. Nathaniel was speechless for a moment. He had been expecting rejection on her end, and a lie out of her mouth. Across the room, Beth even seemed a little shocked.

“You aren’t denying it?”

“Why?”

“You said you were Polish. Back in—”

“ _ Nyet _ ,” Irina’s eyes narrowed. “You assumed. I let you.”

The truth was, Irina had met Beth in Poland when she was trying to get to Berlin only a few days before the wall fell. She had been going by the name Lena, and they ate dinner together. She could still remember it now, Beth being desperately interested in Soviet occupation, Irina indulged her, things got confusing with the language barrier. Beth couldn’t tell the difference between a Russian and Polish accent. No, she had never said she was Polish. A woman in Poznan with the name Lena wasn't uncommon in Poland.

“Why did you let me assume you were Polish? Beth asked.

“In case you forgot, I worked for KGB, and you are American,” Irina said.

Nathaniel glanced over to Markov, who was observing intently at the situation unfolding before him.

“Did you know?” he asked, and Markov shook his head.

“But you knew she worked for the KGB?”

There was an innocent shrug.

“Well,” Markov said. “The KGB was famous for recruiting people outside of the Motherland.”

And he was right. There had been designated schools for that sort of thing, Irina remembered, and they loved teaching people how to shoot before they could even legally drink, Irina herself had sort of fallen into that category aside from the fact that she actually was Russian. They had trained her to kill with her bare hands before she even learned how to speak English.

Now, she recalled hearing a certain conversation the same year she had been recruited between her supervisor and head of the department. Comrade Radomovsky had retold stories from the second world war. The Russians believed everyone was worth something in combat and often sent Soviet women to the front lines to operate tanks and set up blockades, unlike the American women who were told to plant victory gardens or be nifty with a pan of bacon grease. _“Ha!”_ Her older colleagues cackled. _“That is why we won the war!”_ But Irina had never been sure whether or not they had been joking.

“So where is home, exactly?” Nathaniel asked.

“Leningrad.”

“Leningrad? Isn’t that St. Petersburg?”

“Yes.”

“I thought you lived here in Moscow.”

“I do. I moved when I was young.”

“I see,” Nathaniel slowly nodded. “You would never go back?”

“Only if I had family worth going back to.” If there was pain in her eyes, it flickered by too quickly for anybody to catch. Nathaniel looked over to Markov.

“Can’t you just make a Polish passport?” he asked. Markov let out a negative mumble and Beth cut in.

“The point is to do everything legally. I don’t want to go home and have the Department of State up my ass for this,” she said and Nathaniel’s head snapped up.

“Well, I wish I would have known she was a Russki before I agreed to this.”

Nathaniel certainly was upset over the fact that he was married to a Russian, however temporary it may be. Irina disliked it even more than he did, for a multitude of reasons aside from his nationality. She wondered what his mother would have had to say about this, if she knew. Beth had described her once as a deeply religious woman who had the proper family and loved her country. She had died in the late seventies of course, but Irina couldn’t imagine what she’d say if she knew her youngest son put a diamond ring on the finger of a communist blonde.

Nathaniel watched Irina toy with the tiny stone on her hand from across the room. Both were already yearning for when the divorce papers would be filed in six months and she could take it off. Her thoughts drifted back to Nataliya, and she was glad none of them knew the specific details of who she was. Before the marriage had been arranged, Nathaniel asked if there had been any husband before.

“No,” Irina had said without hesitation.

It didn’t raise any red flags, but it was certainly interesting when they discovered she didn’t occupy a house by herself. Beth had been the first to make assumptions. You didn’t spend years in an all girls boarding school without knowing exactly what two women could do together given the inclination. It wasn’t that simple though, and Irina thought about a certain conversation with Alek one night.

_ “You don’t look surprised,” _ she slurred, drunk for one thing, and also in tears.

_“I’m not,”_ Alek said. _“I’ve never seen you even look at a man.”_

_ “I know men. I work with them. I liked them when I was a girl. I should still like them.” _

_ “Maybe you do? But if you don’t, oh well. Just keep your head down.” _

Alek wiped her tears and poured them another drink. Later, Nataliya herself had much to say about the matter, heavily criticizing the so-called ‘Orthodox Christians’ that believed they had justified grounds for killing.

_“They can go knit a fucking prayer quilt,”_ were her exact words, and a drunk Irina was hysterical for the rest of the night.

She focused back on the company in the room. Nathaniel and Markov were exchanging a look, and Beth looked fatigued.

“So, you disobeyed FSB orders and now you’re defecting,” Nathaniel said at last.

“Not so official as that, _podonok_ ,” She muttered. “Is a little more complicated. FSB wants to play silly chess game. Guess who is the pawn. I see chance in chaos, I take it.”

“Not very patriotic of you,” he commented. “An intelligence officer, walking away from your government.”

“My government, they want to stand me against a wall and shoot me.”

“Why?”

“They are still scrambling to form security from the ashes of a fallen nation. Who needs a why?”

“I do.”

“None of your business.”

“Yes, it is.” He crossed his arms, not breaking eye contact with her. “You’re my wife. You’re getting into the U.S through me. Everything in your past is very much my business.”

Irina’s lips remained sealed.

“Alright,” Nathaniel gave in. “We’ll settle. You can keep your secrets. But to get you out of the country, you’ll do everything my way.”

“Why?”

He shared an interesting glance with Beth.

“We’ve been on the other end of this for years, and that’s how it goes. What’s yours is mine, just as what’s mine is now apparently yours. You get my rules while you wear my shirt.”

Irina’s lips thinned into a painful smile.

“‘My shirt, my rules.’ Nataliya said something like that once.”

“Who?”


End file.
